Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
Biomolecules. 2024 Sep 18;14(9):1166. doi: 10.3390/biom14091166.
Cardamom (cardamum) is a spice produced from the seeds of several Elettaria and Amomum plants of the Zingiberaceae family. Cardamom has been demonstrated to offer numerous benefits, including its antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and other metabolic (anti-diabetic) properties, and its potential to reduce cancer risk. Recently, researchers have extracted and tested multiple phytochemicals from cardamom to assess their potential effectiveness against various types of human malignancy. These studies have indicated that cardamom can help overcome drug resistance to standard chemotherapy and protect against chemotherapy-induced toxicity due to its scavenging properties. Furthermore, chemical compounds in cardamom, including limonene, cymene, pinene, linalool, borneol, cardamonin, indole-3-carbinol, and diindolylmethane, primarily target the programmed cell death lignin-1 gene, which is more prevalent in cancer cells than in healthy cells. This review provides the medicinal properties and pharmacological uses of cardamom, its cellular effects, and potential therapeutic uses in cancer prevention and treatment, as well as its use in reducing drug resistance and improving the overall health of cancer patients. Based on previous preclinical studies, cardamom shows significant potential as an anti-cancer agent, but further exploration for clinical use is warranted due to its diverse mechanisms of action.
小豆蔻（cardamom）是姜科小豆蔻属和艳山姜属植物的种子制成的香料。小豆蔻已被证明具有多种益处，包括抗氧化、抗菌、抗炎和其他代谢（抗糖尿病）特性，以及降低癌症风险的潜力。最近，研究人员从小豆蔻中提取并测试了多种植物化学物质，以评估它们对各种人类恶性肿瘤的潜在有效性。这些研究表明，小豆蔻可以通过其清除特性帮助克服对标准化疗的耐药性，并防止化疗引起的毒性。此外，小豆蔻中的化学化合物，包括柠檬烯、对伞花烃、蒎烯、芳樟醇、龙脑、小豆蔻明、吲哚-3-甲醇和二吲哚基甲烷，主要针对程序性细胞死亡配体 1 基因，该基因在癌细胞中比在健康细胞中更为普遍。本综述提供了小豆蔻的药用特性和药理学用途、其细胞作用以及在癌症预防和治疗中的潜在治疗用途，以及它在降低耐药性和改善癌症患者整体健康方面的用途。基于之前的临床前研究，小豆蔻作为一种抗癌药物具有显著的潜力，但由于其多种作用机制，仍需要进一步探索其临床应用。
